SEATTLE
& HAWAII HOST YOUTH QUALIES: The 2007 US Youth
Go Championship (USYGC) tours the West Coast and beyond this month.
Qualifiers will be held in both Seattle and Hawaii this weekend, while
San Francisco will host their event the following weekend.
Fifteen-year-old Lawrence Ku 6d (the EJ’s West Coast
correspondent) is favored in Seattle for the senior bracket, while
Landon Brownell 7d, who will miss the Seattle qualifier (he’s
competing in the state chess championships that weekend) may make the
SF qualifier the following week, where Calvin Lee 6d and Tony Zhang 4d
will top the field. Looking to Hawaii this weekend, the senior bracket
is shaping up as a contest between 17-year-old Kevin Kitamura 1d and
feisty 15-year-old Xiao Feng Ha, who’s rated at 1k, but is
aiming for 5 dan by the US Go Congress. In the junior bracket, look for
4th grader Chase Keesler to make a strong showing. Keesler is
approximately 12 kyu with the rest of the junior field not far behind
and catching up. With so many exciting young players competing, we have
a full slate of youth bios for our readers this week (see below). As
the month continues AGA West Coast Correspondent Lawrence Ku will be
reporting from Seattle, and Orange County senior bracket winner Matthew
Burrall will be covering the San Francisco event for the E-Journal. We
should have a full report on Hawaii as well, and game records from
several of these events.- Paul Barchilon, Youth Editor

YANG,
KERWIN, US CONGRESS, WEBSITE UPDATES: This week regular
EJ contributor Yilun Yang 7P begins a brand-new problem series, this
one focusing on the endgame. We hope you enjoy these elegant problems; click
here to get the weekly game commentaries in
Friday’s Member’s Edition. And look for a new
series soon from James Kerwin 1P, another longtime EJ contributor whose
last series covered how to train for the Go Congress. Also coming soon,
a Special Congress edition of the E-Journal
previewing both the US Go Congress and the European Go Congress. Be
sure to check our website
regularly, as it’s often updated between issues as go news
breaks.

YOUTH
CAMP DEADLINE EXTENDED: The Early Registration Deadline
for the Youth Go Camp West in Tacoma has been extended to March 31
(postmark date), reports Coordinator
Brian Allen. "We are offering the $50
discount to players at the US Youth Go Championship Regional
Tournament, which takes place next weekend at the March 17-18 Seattle
Go Center,” says Allen. “Winners of both age
brackets also get a $400 scholarship to the Go Camp of their choice."
Mingjiu Jiang 7P (right) will lead the instruction at the West Coast
Camp. A visit to Mt. Rainier will be included in the week's activities.
For more information on all three Go Camps (Michigan, Washington and
China) check out the Summer
Camp page on the AGA website. caption: Mingjiu Jiang 7P at Mt
Rainier during Go Camp West 2006.

ANDY
LIU TO LECTURE AT NY CLUB SUNDAY: The New York Go Center’s
Master Player Lecture Series features US Champion – and 2007
World Amateur Go Championship US Rep -- Andy Liu 8d this Sunday.
“Although Andy is still in high school, he may be the
strongest amateur player in the country at the moment,” says
the NYGC’s Roy Laird. “In fact, he's more than that
-- to win the US Open this summer, he went undefeated in a field that
included Bay Area pro Mingjiu Jiang!” The club day fee is
required for non-members, but there is no additional charge, and you
can come from 1P onward and stay until closing, and play as much go as
you want. Liu will present two of his recent games at 3P and take
questions. Send an e-mail to nygc@usgo.org to reserve a seat. HINOKI
PUBLISHES TAKAO’S “BRUTE FORCE”: Hinoki
Press has just released a new go book: Pure and Simple: Takao's Astute
Use of Brute Force, by Takao Shinji 9P. Takao, one of the top Japanese
pros, shows how to find simple, effective lines of plays in all aspects
of the game, with particular attention to the creation and use of
thickness. Takao also offers a thorough analysis of some of his recent
games, illustrating the techniques he has discussed. Available from Slate
& Shell

PARIS
HOSTS TOYOTA PANDANET FINALE: The International Paris Go
Tournament, the biggest go competition in Europe after the European
Congress, is scheduled for April 7-9 in Paris, France. As many as 350
players of all ranks from over 20 countries are expected to participate
in the 12th and final event in the Toyota Pandanet European Go Tour, a
competition which offers large prizes for the strongest players. Click
here for complete details.

TOMA
& DUGIN WINS EURO YOUTH CHAMP: Eleven-year-old
Theodor Toma 2k (right) of
Romania won the under-12 European Youth Championship title, while Artem
Dugin 5d of Russia won the under-18 title. Both players swept their
divisions with six wins each. Toma’s father and coach Dr.
Iulian Toma 3d will captain of European team when they participate in
the World Youth Championships later this year in Boston, MA,- Marilena Bara, European EJ Correspondent

KATO
TAKES JAPANESE WOMEN'S MEIJIN: Kato Keiko 5P (left)
defeated Aoki Kikuyo 8P 2-1 to gain her first title. Aoki has held this
title five times, first in 1990, and has held several others. Kato has
been the challenger twice for the Women's Kisei.CHO
CHIKUN 1-0 IN JUDAN DEFENSE: Cho Chikun 9P (r) took the
first game in the defense of his Judan title against
Yamashita Keigo 9P. Cho is going for a third straight year of holding
the Judan. Yamashita, who has never won this title, was also the
challenger last year. This is the only title Cho currently holds. Now
in his fifties, Cho has become a member of the older generation among
Japanese pros.

ZHOU
RUIYANG WINS CHINESE XINREN WANG: Zhou Ruiyang 4P
defeated Wang Lei 5P 2-0 to win the 14th Chinese Xinren Wang
tournament. Zhou pulled off a 1.5 point victory in the first game, but
took the second by resignation. This "New Pro" event is restricted to
players under thirty and 7P. This is Zhou's first title; he is still a
teenager, a bit younger than Wang who is just into his twenties. The
women's version of this tournament was won by Cao Youyin 2P, defeating
Tang Yi 2P 2-1 to gain her first title.

CHO
U TAKES NEC CUP IN JAPAN: Cho U 9P defeated Takao Shinji
9P to win the fast play NEC Cup. With a winner's prize of about
$145,000 US, this tournament involves the top sixteen players in Japan
in terms of titles held. Cho U also won it in 2005. Cho now holds four
Japanese titles, but only one of the top seven, the Gosei, which he
took from Yoda Norimoto 9P last year. Takao currently holds both the
Meijin and the Honinbo titles.

RUI
NAIWEI 1-0 IN WOMEN'S KUKSU: Rui Naiwei 9P defeated Cho
Hyeyeon 7P by a mere half point to take the first game in the finals of
the Women's Kuksu in Korea. This is the fifth time these two have met
in the finals for this title. So far, Cho has won only one of those
matches, though she has held the title twice. Rui has won it four
times. Since 2000 these two are the only players to win this title.

YOUTH
GO: USYGC ProfilesThis is
the latest in the E-Journal’s ongoing profiles of top
contenders in the US Youth Go Championships.
LAWRENCE KU is a
fifteen-year-old 6 dan from northern California. He learned how to play
go at Chinese school when he was nine years old, and reached shodan
four years later. “I only played 1-2 games a week, even when
I was a kyu player, so it took me a long time to get to
Shodan,” he tells the EJ. He admits to reading lots of go
books in his free time, though. Ku is currently learning go from
Mingjiu Jiang 7P, and is the 2007 Jujo Youth Cup runner-up. He says
young players should “go to as many tournaments as they can,
and also, be serious about every game they play.” Besides
playing go, he enjoys writing for the E-Journal and typing up
tournament reports for the AGA.
XIAO FENG HA is a high school
sophomore. She started playing go in November of 2005 and has been
receiving lessons from Koji Nochi sensei at the Hawaii Go Club. Her
current strength is about 1 kyu. She also plays on KGS. Her favorite go
book is "Korean Style of Baduk". She attended the 2006 Go Camp, and her
goal is to become 5 dan by this year’s US Go Congress.
LANDON BROWNELL 7d
is from Corvallis, Oregon. He is seventeen years old, and was home
schooled. He learned go with his brother four years ago, and he still
does not have a teacher. At the 2005 Go Congress, he won first place in
the 4-dan division. Landon is a national high school chess champion,
and he likes go and chess equally well.
TONY ZHANG, a
13-year-old 4 dan, was first exposed to go at his weekend Chinese
school. He was 7 at the time, and at the age of nine he started playing
go on the internet as well. With his father's guidance, he reached
shodan within three years. He attended the 2005 AGA summer youth camp
as well as the US Go Congress. Later, he began to study Chinese go
books with his father, who is an AGA 1 dan. Tony plays at the Menlo
Park Go Club and sometimes has his games reviewed by Mingjiu Jiang 7P.
He enjoys playing tennis and ping pong with his friends and is in both
his local youth orchestra and his middle school orchestra.
CALVIN LEE, a 17-year-old 6
dan tells the E-Journal “I started
playing go in April of 2004 after watching Hikaru No Go. I found a few
friends at my high school who played and they showed me the ropes. I
taught myself by reading books, watching games, and playing online on
KGS. I reached Shodan about five months after I started playing. I have
no professional teacher even now, so it's pretty difficult to improve,
but I'm still trying my best. I guess an interesting fact about me
would be that I can solve the Rubik's Cube in around 20-25 seconds.
Outside of go I am the layout editor for the school yearbook. I am on
the volleyball team, and I do math competitions. I also participate in
speech and debate, and I play guitar for my church. I don't have any
career goals, but I'm looking to attend a good college and major in
either pure mathematics or computer science.”- reported by Paul Barchilon, Lawrence Ku, Sid Kobashigawa,
Mrs. Zhang and Calvin Lee

CAN'T
STOP THE MONKEY JUMP: A Beginner Studies the Pros by Motoko Arai
Place a single black stone on
the board. Next to it, put another black stone. That stone can be
referred to in many ways: extension (nobi), crawl (hai), push (oshi),
descent (sagari), etc., and depending on the white stones around it,
you can say "butt against" (butsukari) and so on. Do you dare to think
that a beginner can understand all the differences? This is what I want
to discuss. If you can, it's best to learn to play go when you're
young. Which is to say, this situation has a lot in common with a
child's acquisition of his/her native language.
Okay, let's see: I (subject), go
(object), play (verb). Let's take this situation. We want to express
this in English. I, go, play. Okay, the meaning gets across, but if we
try for something a bit more fluent: I play go. / I am playing go. / I
am a go player.
Yup, all of these have "I" as the subject, doing go. Depending on the
point you're making, the way of expressing this thought changes. Each
of the above three sentences has a vaguely different meaning. But if
you try to explain the difference between them it's pretty tough, isn't
it? For example, try to explain the difference between "I play go" and
"I am a go player" to someone who isn't a native English speaker and I
think you'll find it pretty difficult. Just like a native English
speaker can sense the difference between "I play go" and "I'm a go
player" intuitively, so someone who has played go since childhood - a
kind of "go native speaker" - can sense the difference in the ways of
referring to our solitary black stone, intuitively.
And guess what? Just maybe, the people
who generally write go commentaries and books are "native go speakers."
They can read and understand the jargon intuitively, without crib notes
or dictionaries or grammars close at hand. But for an absolute
beginner...
I'm not saying that there should be a
translation for every piece of go commentary. That would probably be
even more complicated. But there are "non-native speakers" out there
who play the game too. And, well, if people could just keep this in
mind, it would be a wonderful thing. Motoko Arai is an
award-winning science fiction author in Japan. Translated by Chris
Donner from the Nihon Kiin's Go Weekly, December 4, 2006.

GO
CALENDAR

March 17-18: Seattle, WA
USYGC Regional Qualifier
Sponsored By the Ing Foundation This is one of three in the Western
Region
http://www.seattlegocenter.org/generateeventpage.php?page=20070317031801.event
Gordon Castanza gcastanza@comcast.net 253.853.4831
Jon Boley jon@airsltd.com 206.545.1424

March 24-25: San Francisco, CA
SF Go Club Spring tournament and World Youth Go Championship qualifier
Registration for the WYGC must be received by Mar. 17
Steve Burrall sburrall@comcast.net 916.688.2858

FOR SALE: "The Breakthrough to Shodan" by Naoki Miyamoto, 9-Dan,
translated by James Davies, The Ishi Press, 1976. This hard-to-find
work is based on a series of 10 articles on 3- and 4-stone handicap
play that Miyamoto wrote for the Igo Shincho in 1973 and 1974. He makes
the case that getting to shodan is not a matter of talent or genius,
but of
focusing on fundamentals, then presents a series of basic ideas to be
followed in play with practical illustrations. This paperback is in
good condition, a bit scuffed up with one corner starting to come apart
a tiny bit, but overall sound. It belonged at one time to the
Association Quebecoise des Joueurs de Go. $95 or best offer plus
postage. Contact Andy at abc@glowwormpub.com (3/12)

PLAYERS WANTED: Monument, CO: Anyone in the area of Monument, Colorado
willing to start a go club, or just someone to play against. Also
anyone who has any ideas on where to host a go club. Please contact
go_player_137@yahoo.com (2/26)

WANTED: Go-playing Chinese-speaking English-speaking China Guide. I am
looking for one person who will travel through China with me, exploring
China and playing go. I will pay expenses but no salary. Please email
peterchristopher@yahoo.com (2/26)

Text material published in the AMERICAN GO E JOURNAL may be reproduced
by any recipient: please credit the AGEJ as the source. PLEASE NOTE
that commented game record files MAY NOT BE published, re-distributed,
or made available on the web without the explicit written permission of
the Editor of the E-Journal. Please direct inquiries to journal@usgo.org

Articles appearing in the E-Journal represent the opinions of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the
American Go Association.

American Go Association
P.O. Box 397
Old Chelsea Station
New York, NY 10113-0397
American Go Association P.O. Box 397 Old Chelsea Station New York, NY
10113-0397 You are subscribed as cgarlock@starpower.net. To unsubscribe
please click here.

American
Go Association
P.O. Box 397
Old Chelsea Station
New York, NY 10113-0397